I was only 15 minutes away from the hospital when my wife, Jodie, called. I answered and heard four words I will never forget: “We are losing Malachi.”
Malachi, our nine-year-old son, had contracted Shiga toxin-producing E. coli. We had taken him to the hospital, where, for two weeks, his condition rapidly spiraled: his kidneys failed, he went into septic shock, and fluid accumulated in his abdomen and heart, requiring surgery. When his heart function dropped to 35 percent, the medical staff placed him on ECMO life support.
A few hours after the ECMO surgery, there was finally a brief window of calm in Malachi’s room, and I decided to head home to see our other kids for the first time since he was admitted. God had provided a way for our extended family members to fly to Brazil, where we serve as missionaries, on a rotating basis to care for our other three children while we stayed with Malachi in the hospital.
The calm did not last long. On my way home, Jodie called, hurriedly explaining that the ECMO machine had failed.
Alarms were blaring as nurses and doctors rushed into the room. One nurse, following protocol, began CPR. Another searched for the problem and quickly found it—an air bubble had entered the tubing and was moving toward Malachi’s body. An air bubble would be fatal. She rapidly clamped the lines shut.
ECMO machines are high-risk and require constant monitoring by specialized technicians. Any complication can result in brain damage or death. Malachi’s ECMO had failed within 24 hours, and an alert nurse saved his life. His heart was still beating, the CPR was not needed, but he would require another ECMO surgery to restore the functions of the machine now circulating and oxygenating his blood.
Jodie witnessed all of this as she was on the phone with me. I turned around immediately and drove back to the hospital, imagining what life might look like without our precious Malachi. We were in our first term of ministry, finally finished with language school and now fully invested in the work we had been called to do. What were we going to do now?
There were no answers to that question. The weight of the moment was more than Jodie and I could carry. In the hospital, we lived in a constant state of crisis response—day and night—with little space to process or grieve. We were fighting for our son. Outside our small world, news spread quickly, and God’s people across the world prayed and wept for us. It felt as though the church was carrying an emotional and spiritual burden we could not lift ourselves, and we knew that their prayers and God’s mercy sustained us every minute of every day.
I am someone who likes to make plans, analyze situations, and understand how things work. With the collapse of my son’s health, I could do none of that. I was completely lost. In those moments, God was stripping away our plans and directing our paths. I had no other recourse but to trust God to work according to his sovereign plans for Malachi’s life.
In his kindness, God chose to restore Malachi’s health. After spending more than a month in intensive care, he was released from the hospital.
Much has changed in our lives in the three years since Malachi’s illness and healing—ministry direction, language learning, and our children’s schooling. Plans shifted in ways we never anticipated.
Yet each time I return to the question, “What are we going to do now?” my focus is no longer on the solution. Rather, I remind myself that the answer is not found in a certain plan or mechanism. The answer is found in the God who has called us.
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths” (Proverbs 3:5–6).
Whatever lies ahead, our calling remains the same: to remain faithful to him. Through uncertainty, pain, and change, we follow where he leads. Our first term in Brazil was full of twists and turns—many messy, difficult, and deeply painful. But he was always with us.
By God’s grace, may we choose to stay faithful.
